The first visit of the SEVA Champagne trip was to Jacquinot in Epernay. Jean-Manuel is well acquainted with the English wine industry. He first worked with Nyetimber a decade ago, and since then has moved away from that to be the Wineskills mentor for sparkling wine, via which he visits and speaks to lots of English wine makers. He’s a very charismatic bloke, and his wines were tasting very nicely today. I particularly liked his Harmony’96 and Symphonie’00 so I bought some.

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What did I learn from the visit? Well the topic of riddling came up and Jean-Manuel made the point that to get a good clarity in the resulting wine he always leaves the riddling crate to sit for a week next to the gyropalate so the lees resettles before starting the riddling. When loading the crate into the gryopalate, extreme care is taken not to move the bottles suddenly.